


Urchin

by lucyoliver



Series: Awakening [1]
Category: Half-Life
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 23:21:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16417985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucyoliver/pseuds/lucyoliver





	1. 1

Her head hurt. She remembered the pain. The pain in her legs, chest, face. The grinding pain. She remembered nothing of the night before. Or the day before. What year is it? I can't remember. It was dark. Her eyes were closed. Her fingertips felt numb. The room was so cold. It smelled of fresh linens, everything crisp and clean. She opened her eyes. Still dark. There was no difference. She couldn't see a thing. She moved her head in a nodding motion, sat up. She remembered...a party? She went to a party after getting out of a car of some kind. Something else... no. That was it. Her memories took her to the door and nowhere else. Where was she lying? A bed in her room? A couch in a friend's house? She moved her legs off of whatever it was, let her bare feet touch the floor. It was cold, too. She shivered at its touch. She tried to stand, but her legs collapsed under her weight, and she fell back on what she assumed was a bed. She felt weak, light-headed. She put her feet back on the cushion, tried to warm them. And now she noticed her mouth was dry. Dehydration, maybe. Drugs can cause dehydration. Anesthetics? She checked her neck and arms for any needle marks, and sure enough, she found one. Immediately she came to the conclusion that she'd been drugged. 

 

But, she didn't panic, as most girls would. Almost instinctively, she was calm. Level-headed. Whoever did this would probably want money in return for my life, she thought. Ransom. But to who? She didn't have any family. Or did she? Where are they now, when I'm locked in this dark room? Who are they? And then a sudden, terrifying realization kicked in. Who am I? She must have a name. She couldn't remember anything...

 

Lights flipped on. They were so bright they blinded her. Her headache was worse now. She winced and shielded her eyes. After a few seconds, her eyes adjusted to the light. She could see now. She loved that. Through her eyes, she saw a plain room. No paintings. Bland-looking stainless steel furniture, and not much of it at that. No distinguishable attributes. An architect would say the room looked like a white box with grid lines running throughout the walls and floors. And they wouldn't be wrong. She looked around, bewildered by this bizarre looking room. She saw a water fountain next to the desk in the corner. Only then did she realize how thirsty she was. Her feet touched the floor again, and she tried standing. Surprisingly, she gained a bit of a wobbly stance and used the bed for support. She was standing. But walking was another task entirely, and it may prove to be difficult. 

 

She moved her right foot, almost fell on the floor, and she quickly moved it back. Was walking ever this hard? She moved her foot again and tried to compensate for the movement. Balance, again. Slowly, she moved her left foot and placed it beside the right. Standing again. Baby steps. She did this until she reached the fountain. She'd fallen on the way, but she got back up and hugged the wall so it would make things easier. She drank her fill and then drank some more. The water was warm. Ish. She washed her face. For some reason, she half expected there to be a mirror in front of the fountain. Like if she'd seen it before. There wasn't one, of course. She looked back to the bed. It seemed far away, now that she'd practically crawled over here. Where in the world was she? She could be in Mexico. Human trafficking was common there. She imagined a dark-skinned man come in the room, toyed with the idea of it. 

 

She realized again how cold it was. The water on her face was no longer warm. The bed had somehow kept her cozy, despite the fact that she wasn't under any blankets. She looked around the room once more. There was a door to the left of the bed. How had she not noticed it before? It was so big. She examined it and took it as a sign from God to get the Hell out of there. She walked towards the door, but when she got there she noticed there was no doorknob. She looked to the sides of the door, and she saw a keypad. Great. A locked door with a coded password. She could definitely just walk out of this place. She stepped towards the keypad, played with it by entering random numbers, laughed at the futility of it. She was stuck here until her captor(s) said otherwise. She walked back to her bed, sat down. She looked around yet again. Something, in particular, caught her eye. There is a mirror in this room. She strode towards the mirror, stood in front of it. She saw her reflection. Blonde hair that fell to just below her neck, hazel blue eyes, a freckled face. An hourglass frame with a Caucasian skin tone. She was a pretty sight. She moved her raggy hair out of the way and revealed the needle mark on her neck. It was red and swollen. It looked recent. Her head still hurt. It felt like someone was pounding her skull with a hammer. She saw what she was wearing. A white colored jumpsuit? If she'd been kidnapped, why did they change what she was wearing? And to this of all things? She began to doubt her conclusion. Something else was going on here. And she felt it was something worse than mere ransom. 

 

A high-pitched tone played loudly on the hidden speakers in the walls. It startled her, and she whipped her gaze around the room. There was no one else here. What made that sound? The tone played again. Louder this time. She covered her ears. It played once more, louder still. It began to sting her ears, and she winced until the tone ended. Her head hurt so badly she thought she'd faint. Then it stopped, but the pain persisted. She didn't move her hands from her ears until the throbbing in her cranium had subsided slightly, enough that every sound didn't make it worse.

 

"Welcome to your new home, Citizen." 

It was an old, hoarse thing. Like a sound, you would hear from an old man on his deathbed. The voice echoed in the room. 

 

"New home? What the hell are you talking about? Who are you?" She demanded coarsely. It hurt to speak. She realized that now. Her own voice was dry and scratchy, no better or no worse than the man who was speaking to her. 

"My identity is none of your concern, Prospekt member 18."

 

Prospekt? Is that what this place is? She struggled to spell the word in her mind. 

 

"Where am I?" asked the girl, but she didn't expect a direct answer. 

 

"In the recent weeks, the government had announced that an underground bunker was being formed and six people were to be selected for test trials. This is where you are. Your amnesia is only temporary. A side-effect to the drugs you were given when you entered the bunker. In a period of six weeks, your memory should be restored."

But it hadn't. Her memory was as blank as it had been that day.

  
  


\----------------------

  
  


The months that followed pertained little. When she wasn't sleeping, she was mostly bored out of her mind. P18 had learned the name of the voice in the walls. 'The Warden', is what he demanded to be called. P18 felt it appropriate to give him a gender because, well, he had none. And a male seemed fitting. The Warden had told her, when she woke up in the bunker, that she was a test subject for God knew what. She didn't believe everything he told her, and rightfully so. There was one major event, one that terrified her every time it came, and it came every month. Cleaning Day. Yes indeed. 

 

The day would start off normal. She would be sitting on her bed, counting the lines in the walls, keeping time, or doing whatever she did to keep herself occupied. Then the door to her room--excuse me, cell-- would slide open. The first time she thought it was her way out. As her eyes met with the thing standing in the doorway, she knew immediately that she was wrong. She knew also that something very bad was going to happen very soon. It was tall, humanoid, pale. It vaguely reminded her of a corpse that had been badly starved before death. Its limbs were ridiculously oversized, and its bones bulged underneath the skin. Its hands, disgustingly rotted looking, were coarse, and even from where she was sitting she could see how cold they must have been. Its legs just below the knee had been replaced with some kind of metal rod, and there were to spherical objects where its feet should have been. But of course, it was standing on them, so they were its feet. All of these things, dreadful as they may seem, dimmed in comparison to the creature's face. Stricken with fear, she would slowly move her gaze toward its head, expecting to see large teeth and crimson eyes that pierced her soul. She stopped at its head. She tried to scream, but only a small groan escaped her lips. It had no eyes. No mouth, nor any ears. Nor a nose. Its face was just... blank. She took her gaze back down to its hands. It was holding a syringe. _For me,_ she thought wearily, _that syringe is for me. A little bit of a sedative, maybe? Or perhaps it’s a neurotoxin that will trigger pain reactions and muscle spasms?_ _I don’t know._  And she didn’t. As if in response to this, the creature moved forward. But by then she had fainted.

 

When she came into consciousness, something she had not entirely wanted, reality began to form back into normality. The creature, whatever in God's name it had been, had gone. As the fear of that thing left her mind, she noticed she felt different. Her vision was blurred. She was dehydrated, again. She tried to move her legs and noticed how hard it was to move. Her limbs felt as if they created with each movement she made. Luckily, though, her head was just fine. When her vision cleared, she sat up on her bed. Her legs felt like jelly.  _ So it was a sedative.  _ She let her bare feet (they never gave her shoes. Maybe they didn't find much use for them since the floor was always clean) touch the floor, and it's cold surface sent chills that radiated throughout her body. She inhaled sharply, through her nose. The air smelled clean, just like it had when she woke up the first time. That morning she had desperately wanted a bath, and now she smelled like a newborn. She turned to the bed sheets, smelled them. Fresh linens. She did the same with her clothes. Clean. She looked towards the door with a faint hope of escape, but as her gaze met the closed door that hopes faded into nonexistence, as she knew it would.  _ They came in and cleaned the place up, is that it? That syringe was supposed to knock me out, but I guess they didn’t even have to use it, huh?  _ She let herself laugh at that. She laughed so hard her stomach had begun to tickle itself, and tears rolled down her pale cheeks. 

 

When she had finished, she lay back down on the bed, closed her eyes. She tried to remember what had happened after that creature came. She couldn't remember the creature, what it had looked like, how it approached her. But she knew it had been in the room. She knew, among many things she wished she did not know, that it had been so terrifying she had fainted. In a way, it was a mercy. She was silently grateful for the loss of memory. She thought, for a moment, that the loss of memory had kept her sane. 

And with that thought, she drifted into the darkness of sleep. When she would awake from the alarm, she would find that it was the best sleep she had ever had. A dreamless sleep. The next day she got up when the alarm blared, washed her face, and drank from the fountain. She had decided, in her sleep, that she would not let herself think of that creature. If it came again, she would close her eyes, and let the sedative take her away. She thought it would be best. 


	2. 2

Four years after she was brought to the facility, there was then a very long series of events, both related and unrelated to Prospekt 18, that led to her escape. There was a man. A man who, while highly regarded by the majority of humanity, when in combat, seemed to rely on overwhelming the enemy with pure lunacy. His tactics would be called “unorthodox” by the leader of a SWAT team, had there been any left during the time of his unorthodoxy. There was a woman. A woman who, though held at a lower standard than the “Freed Man” himself, was also highly regarded by humanity. Being the daughter of the great Eli Vance, Alyx Vance was also a participant in the Lambda resistance, it led to her becoming a sort of role-model for many. 

 

This long series of events started with Mr. Freeman. He, in effect, “returned from the dead”. For the last 20 years, Freeman had been in a controlled stasis. Controlled by whom remains a mystery to Freeman himself. Perhaps, beyond the need to save humanity, in his adventurous journey, Freeman also searched for answers. However, that is another story entirely. After 20 years of tyranny under the rule of the Combine empire, Freeman emerged from his very long sleep. And from here, interesting things start to happen.

 

It is unclear as to where Freeman was first seen. Nor is it important, really. A citizen of City 17 later claimed to have seen Freeman in the town hall, shortly after the newly arrived train passengers had disembarked, another claimed to have seen a mysterious man on that same train, and having no memory of this man getting on the train at the previous Combine checkpoint, but neither of these stories were proven to be factual. It is believed that, after getting off the train in City 17, he went through the checkpoint without so much as a suspicious eye from CP officers, and arrived in the courtyard of the City from where he was discreetly taken to an underground laboratory by former Black Mesa head of security, Barney Calhoun. In this laboratory, Freeman was introduced briefly to Alyx Vance, and he met with Dr. Isaac Kleiner. This laboratory is also believed to have been where Dr. Kleiner had been working on advanced teleportation technology, but this piece of information also remains to be proven. After being filled in on the events of the last 20 years, Freeman, Calhoun, and young Vance set off towards the Citadel in hopes of igniting a resistance in the residency of City 17 but were met with increasingly troubling difficulties. Dr. Wallace Breen, the head of administration in City 17, and self-proclaimed ambassador for the human race, had been informed of Freeman’s emergence from the dead and had prepared a Combine Overwatch strike force and had sent it after the three with an army of remotely controlled reconnaissance vehicles. The groups scattered, and Freeman was left on his own. 

 

After fighting off waves of Overwatch soldiers, word of Freeman’s arrival spread like wildfire. On his way to the hidden laboratory, Black Mesa East, he was assisted many times by known rebel soldiers. In two days time, he met face-to-face with Dr. Eli Vance, and his female colleague, Dr. Judith Mossman. After being told the of objective the resistance movement, Freeman found that he had been unwittingly followed by the Overwatch strikeforce, and the laboratory was sieged. Freeman was separated from his colleagues once more and was forced to retreat into the neighboring mining town of Ravenholm, where he fought off more waves of alien possessed miners and headcrabs. After three gruesome hours of combat, Freeman emerged from the mining town unscathed and determined to continue. He made his way to a rebel outpost and spoke briefly to Alyx Vance. She supplied him with an all-terrain vehicle and a map of the infamous coastal wasteland. He was told that Eli Vance had been captured and sent to the experimentation/prison facility known as Nova Prospekt. Young Alyx asked for his help. As he traversed through the harsh environment of the wasteland, he was met with enemies such as the antlions, headcrabs, goliaths, and the Overwatch’s relentless pursuit. 

 

Two and a half days passed, and he arrived at the heavily fortified outer base of the prison. It is said that he rested before infiltrating the facility, but this is another rumor. He broke into the prison while our friend was sound asleep in the lowest depths of the complex. The fighting woke her. She had thought it had been another test, but that had not been the case. Freeman fought through wave after wave of Prospekt security guards in search of Eli Vance and had inadvertently freed our friend in the experiment room. There was an explosion. A series of them. A ricochet bullet had impacted with a fuel reserve in one of the storage rooms and set it ablaze. Seconds later, the artillery shells were covered in flames, and they exploded in a **_KAWHUMFFF!_** that shook the entire complex. It blew a hole in her room, and the shockwave, warm in its millisecond long gush of air, had thrown her against the wall. 

She lay there, unconscious, while Freeman continued fighting.


	3. 3

It was dark. The air was cold, yet warm at the same time. Had I finished that book on my bed? She couldn’t remember. Did the alarm go off yet? It must still be early because she hadn’t heard it yet. Faintly, she could smell burning plastic. But… that’s not possible. The only smell in her room was of her own origin, and she certainly hadn’t burned any plastic. Could it be a new air freshener that the warden is using? Or maybe a--

There was a sharp sting in the back of her neck, and it came almost immediately after the smell began. Gingerly, she tried to move her arms and le--

_ Pain!  _

Such incredible pain! It was so immense it nearly made her slip back into the darkness for a moment. It ran up and down one of her legs, she did not yet know which. It felt like someone was dragging a knife from her hip bone to her ankle. Slowly, she opened her eyes. They felt heavy in their sockets and her vision was blurred. Everything was covered in fuzz, and there was a disarray of color. She could smell other things now. Smoke, gasoline, gunpowder. All of these scents shot up her nasal passage in an instant, and she felt slapped. Her vision had begun to clear. The pain in her leg, a throbbing sensation that threatened to stamp out any of her other senses, was on her left hip. Soon enough, her vision cleared. After regaining her sight, she found that it was hard to believe that she wasn’t dreaming. There was a fire. The flames were covering her bed, sheet, pillows. The smoke had started burning her eyes, and she began to cough.  _ What on earth happened here? _

Through her right eye, everything looked red, as if she were looking through a color filtering lens. The flames on her bed were a bright and deadly orange, leering at her with each waving movement. Her left eye was just fine. Looking down, towards her waist, she saw that her clothes were covered in black soot, loose pieces of plastic, and… blood. Moving her hand to touch it, the pain jabbed her leg again. She groaned and stopped moving. By the looks of it, the blood had dampened her white cargo shorts and had stained her shirt. I wonder how the warden will deal with this, hm? Will he make me throw them down the trash shoot, to be incinerated? Probably. The flames still roared on, turning the bed that she had slept on for four years into ash and the charred remains of a bed frame. 

Then, as if it were a sign, a cold rush of air beat against her face. But… from where? The air conditioning system was never on this early in the day. Turning from her leg, she examined the room. The mirror was still intact but on the floor. The bookshelf next to her bed was about to burn, and she felt a tinge of sadness about that. As she looked closer, she could hardly express the shock. There was an opening, wide and burning, where the door should have been. Looking into a vastly deep corridor, she knew that something was very, very wrong. 

A few minutes passed. As her consciousness wavered, the darkness that surrounded her vision had made her feel choked, out of breath. Or maybe it was the smoke from the fire that now engulfed half of her room. Or… the overseer. He was not here now, watching her with the  _ needle _ . She did not like the  _ needle,  _ because whenever it and it’s master came, she could not remember what they did. The scars on her neck and thigh were an indication, but of what, really? She could not know. The overseer, with its brief sessions, had haunted her since she had come in this place. It’s eyeless sockets, lipless mouth, noseless nasal passage. Its hands were colder than the air conditioning system in her room, and yet… it  _ breathed _ , as if dead and alive. But that could not be--

An explosion pulled her from her daze. She tensed. The vibrations from the blast rumbled underneath her, and it gave a leg a sting... momentarily. But for the most part, the pain in her leg was gone. Did she dare to move? Dare to invoke on the pain again?

She did. Moving from the right side of her body first, she used the wall (which she found surprisingly warm) to pull herself up from the ground and stand. Succeeding, she stopped, rested. And then, with a little hesitation, she took a step away from the wall. 

Nothing. Not numbness, not a faint sting. There was nothing. As if the wound in her leg was not there at all.  Feeling emboldened by this, she took another step. Soon enough, she was standing in front of the new entrance, looking into the deep corridor. It seemed no bigger than the door itself when it had been there. Although, it seemed bigger, heavier than anything she could have imagined. Was it the thought of freedom that was such a massive achievement. She could not remember the last time she thought of an outside world, anything from her life before.  _ What would it be like? Would it be safe enough? Would she be happy?  _

  
_ You’re happy right here, with the overseer! There’s no need to leave!  _ a voice from nowhere and everywhere seemed to say. She had everything she could ever want, or need. Food, water, clothing… everything. Why would she ever want to leave this place? She gave it some more thought, and behind her, the flames raged on. She hadn’t seen another person in… who knew? She couldn’t remember the last time she had a conversation with someone, or even spoke! But what would the Warden say? He would be infuriated. He had always told her the outside was a dangerous place; there was never anything good for her outside this room. The overseer was a prime example of that. Without realizing, she’d taken another step forward. Was it really what she wanted? Another step. She hadn’t seen another person in years, and that was enough for her. Barefoot, she stepped over sizzling pieces of steel and plastic, walked out of her room, and her journey began. 


	4. 4

The air was cold. She walked through the halls, her wounded leg still ignoring the pain. The darkness surrounded her, as it had when she was on the floor. The only light came from the fire in her room, which, by the way, had turned her bed to ash. The farther she walked away, the more the darkness closed in. The corridor went on and on. Each step she made echoed off the walls, and she could hear the howling of the air circulating. She felt fear, unease, but more than that, she could feel the adrenaline pumping through her veins. It was exhilarating.

Using the wall to guide her, she walked until she was met with a door. She searched for a doorknob, didn’t find one. She moved on, feeling the wall as she walked. It was significantly different than what she was used to. There were gaps and crevices and she could put her whole arm in if she dared. Slowly she walked, and eventually, she nearly tripped on something. In the back of her mind, something told her to keep going. She stepped over it and walked on. 

About 10 minutes after she left her room, she found a light. A line of them, actually. Some flickered, others were too bright. All of them were the white she had been subject to for four years. Stepping away from the wall, she followed them. They led to a row of doors, parallel to each other on either wall. She counted a dozen in total. None of them had doorknobs. She kept going.

She walked on for what felt like hours. The entire time, her mind was screaming:  _ Go back to your room! It's safe in there! It's safe insid--  _ The lights gradually increased in quality the farther she went, though they stayed on her left side. Looking up, she could not see the roof. It just went up as far as she could see. That made her feel very, very small. 

She arrived at a crossroads, where there was a corridor to the left and right. For a moment, she was indecisive. She felt it would be best to go left, so she went left. Along the way, she saw bodies. Some of then she'd never seen before. The body structures were so drastically different from hers that she could not tell to what race it belonged to. They wore odd clothing, nothing she could identify. Uniforms, it seemed. Dark blue insulated pants and sweaters, bulletproof vests, combat boots. There were guns scattered all over the floor, along with pools of blood. Were they soldiers? Had they died in some kind of battle? She examined a little closer. 

Each of their uniforms bore the words NOVA PROSPEKT on their backs. Prospekt… she'd heard that before. Four years ago. “Prospekt member 18”. P18. That's her name. Were they protecting her? Keeping her safe? She suddenly felt very obligated to go back to her room. That would be best, right? She couldn't in good conscience let these men die in vain. 

She had started to take a step back when she saw something among the bodies that made her freeze. Lying on its back, facing opposite her, was the overseer. It did not move. All too fast, she felt its hands around her neck, the  _ needle  _ in hand. But the overseer lay among the bodies, cold as ever. It was her mind playing tricks. Quietly, she made her way around the bodies and moved on. They were not protecting her. They were guarding her. 

On she went, and soon enough she reached the end of this long corridor, where she was met with stairs opposite an elevator. The same voice that told her to keep going when bumped into something in the darkness, told her not to take the elevator. Just like before, she listened. 

She started up the stairs, looked above. The stairs seemed to go up at least ten stories, the end having a large and glowing red EXIT sign. She could see a roof now. Had she been going up during her walk through the corridor? She looked at the stairs. They were rusted, cracking. They looked like they could barely hold the weight of a feather, let alone her body, slim as she was. She decided to trust the voice in her head and put her weight on a step. It creaked, almost menacingly, but did not break. She went to the next, and the next after that. Before she knew it, she had gone up two floors. Step, by step, by step, by ste--

The pain struck her again. The suddenness of it caused her to lose her balanced, nearly toppling her over. Falling, she caught the railing with her right arm, and that hurt as well. 

How could this be? The pain had been so great before she had left her room, then it stopped. Now she could feel it again, only worse. Her consciousness faded; her vision blurred. It was then that the Warden said to her, 

_ Do you see it now? The unnecessary pain? The unwarranted suffering? Why don't you come back home, darling? Where you belong? _

But did she belong there, with the  _ needle _ and the overseer and the Warden and the walls and the mirror and the knobless doors and the fluorescent lights and the  _ col--  _

No, no, for God's sake  _ no!  _ She did not belong there. She belonged anywhere but  _ there. _

She pulled herself to a stance, tried to remain there. She waited to grasp her balance before stepping forward again, gritting her teeth. Each time she moved, a groan escaped her lips, and the pain stabbed her entire box. She did not stop. She did not go back. She was standing in front of the EXIT sign before she finally collapsed, unconscious. A stream of blood had followed her from her room to where she now lay. It ran down her leg like a faucet, the crimson color of her bodily fluid. 

The room was just as it had always been. White, fluorescent lights. The very familiar scent of fresh linens. And… silence. She was sitting up on her bed, waiting for the overseer to come in and give her the mandatory mental evaluation test. She would take it, he would leave, and that would be that. The wound in her leg was gone. Her clothes were white again, and the pain had left her. She wondered what it must be like, living outside. The warden had told her that the world was an empty, barren place, with no more life than there was in her room. She’d never really taken him for a liar (bad things usually happened if she did), but she didn’t want to believe him about this. She couldn’t be the only one left. How could she? Was she really part of some test to rebuild humanity? She thought not. The slot in the wall to her right opened; a cold bowl of wheatmeal was sitting on a steel tray. She walked over to it, picked it up. Looking into the bowl, she realized she wasn’t hungry. She put it down by her bed and sat down again.

She remembered a day when she’d almost escaped. Something had been wrong with the overseer that day. It was more sluggish and slow than usual. And, for a time, she’d been less afraid of it. Less willing to close her eyes and let the sedative take her. 

It was a cold morning for cleaning, she remembered. One of the coldest. She suspected that the warden had lowered the temperature so that she would get sick. She didn’t, and when the overseer came in, the temperature seemed to be working in her favor. Upon entering the room, the overseer was very slow; it almost didn’t move. It stood about a meter away from the door, as if waiting. She had sat on the bed, waiting as well. A few minutes passed. Nothing. Not a move. She got up, dared to go closer. Very cautiously, stepped closer, touched its hand. It did not react. Just then, an idea sprung into her mind, as if it had been waiting in some corner of her conscience. ESCAPE. The door was open, the overseer didn’t move. She stepped off to the left, moving away in case the overseer suddenly jumped into motion. And with that, she felt her skin burn. It was not a fiery burn, as if she’d walked through flames, it was like an acid burn. It swallowed her body in seconds, throwing her to the flowing in screeching pain. She was unconscious in seconds. As her eyes closed, she could see the door slam shut. It was the first time the warden had tested her “loyalty to the cause”. Whatever that was. 

Suddenly, the lights flipped off. Frightened, she jumped off the bed, kicking the bowl at her feet to the floor. Shit. The warden would make her eat that off the floor. Of course, she might as well have eaten it in the bowl. Cleaning day was yesterday. Everything was sterile. Red lights blinded her momentarily, and then a loud tone looped itself on the comm overlay. An alarm. What is this, she thought. Another test? It blared on, drowning out all other sounds. Then, it stopped. Just as quickly as it had started. 

She could hear the explosions now. They were far off, and yet they were very close. Getting louder and louder with each passing minute.  _ i need to get out of here, i want to get out, get out, get OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GE-- _

“ _ \--ET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!”  _ Immediately, she felt a hand at her side and the pain in her leg struck her like a blow. But she didn’t stop screaming. The words played in a loop inside her mind.  _ Get out, get out, I want to get out! _ Her head hurt badly. The hand moved to her chest, right below her left breast.  Her eyes open.

“Woah, woah, woah. Hold on there, missy. Calm down a minute. It’s all right, you’re safe now. You’ve got nothing to be afraid of. ” a voice said. She turned, saw where it came from. It was a person. An old man, with a concerned expression on his face. 

“You’ve been out for some time. Who are you?” he said. 

She wept. 


End file.
